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Comment by miki123211 | Hacker News Reader

Not just that, nobody chooses their parking spot based on the UI of the machine.

Banks and phone manufacturers now care about UI, because some of them started to do so, and people started switching to them en masse. US carriers were bleeding subscribers left and right when the iPhone was only available on AT&T, which was the first time people started switching plans to get a specific phone instead of the other way around.

People usually choose their parking based on where they want to go and how far it is from that place, and that trumps all other considerations. Paying more for programmers or parking machine processors would be a waste of money.

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Interesting story; I went to park at a downtown lot in my local city (Vancouver BC) and the machine had an unusual UI. So I skipped the machine and scanned the QR code for the app. By the time I had taken the elevator up to the lobby of the building I had the app.

But then the usability on the app was so bad, that I actually could not figure out how to buy parking. The instructions were clear, but the latency on the app was unusable. The Internet connection was fine. It was the app. So I skipped the whole thing, went to dinner, and was happy when I found my car without a ticket.

"Unable to buy a ticket" would have been an interesting day in court.

I live in vancouver and cannot install such apps on my phone. While you may have found the machine's UI unusual, I use them quite often and I suspect that people like me would invalidate your claim... if it went to court. But parking lots aren't the purview of the courts -- enforcement of private parking happens privately, so your sorrows would likely fall on the hardened ears of a privately owned impound lot operator.

My partner and I frequently "race" at the parking game and I win at the "slow" machine nearly every time because the apps are so unresponsive and badly designed.

It wasn't one of the "Ziply" or "PayByPhone" machines - with which I have no problem, generally. These are much more common.

It was "Parkedin" at 745 Thurlow St, underground lot. I haven't encountered it anywhere else. Do me a favour, go park there and see for yourself.

Curious that you'd be willing to invalidate my claim without knowing what service it was.

> Paying more for programmers or parking machine processors would be a waste of money.

The rise of parking apps on mobile adds an interesting angle to this.

No doubt, many of us favour apps because the UX is so much better. Not quite sure if that affects the bottom line short-term, but long-term I’m sure it will.

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